Happy 225th Constitution!

It was 225 years ago today September 17, 1787, that the Constitution was ready to be delivered to the states for ratification. Our Constitution is the most brilliant and unique governing document ever written. It is a document designed to create a limited government with checks and balances, enumerated powers, and a federal structure which shares and reserves powers with the several states while stymieing the designs of ambitious men and mischievous factions.

It could never be written in today’s world and was unique even among the documents of the Enlightenment. It must be preserved, respected, and defended since there has never been, and may never be, another governing document like it. To quote James Madison in Federalist #51 while writing in favor of its ratification:

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Fidelity to the rule of law is more important today than it has ever been in my lifetime — we haven’t been living in an age where the government has been obliging to control itself very well.